FC #398 – TUNED HONDA CIVIC TYPE R EP3

Feeling like he’d hit a wall with his Civic Type R project, it wasn’t until Chris Coulton’s nephew Connor jumped on board that the pair really began to make some serious progress…

Is it just us here at FC towers, or do all the important, successful people seem to be getting younger and younger these days? From Olympic athletes to chart-topping singers, it appears the world is now dominated by people roughly half the average age of that in our office (and we’re pretty certain it’s got nothing to do with us lot getting older).

Chris, the owner of this tidy Type R here, is one guy who’s experienced just how talented the latest generation is. After suffering from the car variant of writer’s block when modifying this silver hatch, he benefited from a fresh pair of eyes to kick-start the project once more, in the form of his talented nephew, Connor. And by working as a team, they’ve really managed to get somewhere pretty special.

Focusing on a handful of heavily modified, boosted Jap cars such as a Pulsar GTI-R and an RX-7 a few years back, Chris eventually snapped up this then-standard EP3 back in 2008 to serve him as a slightly more sensible yet still fun daily run-around. “Unlike my previous cars, the plan with this one really was just to leave it alone!” he recalls.

You probably won’t be all that surprised to hear that less than a week later, this celebrated little hatch was proudly sporting a new set of wheels, springs and an exhaust system as Chris caved into the allure of endless parts that’re available for this popular car. Over the course of the next few years, more impressive-yet-sensible bits found their way onto the Civic. It became faster and much more appealing to look at, while never becoming too extreme to stop using comfortably on a daily basis, like some of his previous builds had managed.

“I ended up losing interest in cars for a bit, to be honest,” Chris remembers, as the mods soon dried up and interest in his trusty Honda began to dwindle. “I decided to keep it though and use it as a fairly fun daily like I’d always planned.” With passion for modifying his car at an all-time low, he’d clearly need a miracle if he was ever going to rekindle the love between himself and his VTEC-powered companion. And luckily, that’s exactly what he got…

“It was when my nephew Connor got to an age where he became interested in cars, and kind of took over the project for me by doing what he wanted, that things began moving again,” Chris smiles, happy to have his teenage sidekick on board to bring an entirely…